Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Seminal Program of Life

The human genome is written in a code that is analogous to a computer program. Instead of a language written in alpha characters it uses a language written in chemical chains of acids. Still a language, regardless of how it is written, is still a language. A language is used to explain things and the genome language provides the instructions on how a living thing is put together. The analogy is that a program tells a computer how something will work and the same is true for a program that codes a living thing.

One of the first things a programmer realizes is that there is art in writing a program. It is not just the science that gives it utility but the art that makes it awesome. An artless program can be made to work just as an elegant one. If you call up and look at programs that have been expanded and reworked for a long period of time you often see lines of code injected helter-skelter without regard to functional symmetry. These modifications are not transparent to the user who tends to be more interested in how the program operates rather than the underlying beauty with which it is written.

What biologists are seeing as they look at the coding of the various genomes is evolutionary reprogramming to enhance the survival of a species. It is not elegantly written and the code is not arranged with the balance and symmetry of a modular program written by a virtuoso. Rather it appears to be written with an eye more to utility than form.

To me this speaks volumes about the difference between creation and evolution. If we ever discover the seminal program of life I suspect we will see a primordial beauty of form that is uncluttered by all the changes that have been appended in the course of evolution.